


The Magnet and the Machine

by sherlocktorwho



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Computer Viruses, Computers, Gen, Minor Violence, Programming, computer, hyperlink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:10:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlocktorwho/pseuds/sherlocktorwho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He cracks the computer open by force, and he studies the underbelly of the city, the schematics, the hardware, in all its urban glory, bleak gray slabs with sprinkled patches of green. He pushes away a loose wire here and there, the Bakerloo or Piccadilly or Victoria line, just to make it easier to see. He stares at a map and etches the circuitry of the city into his mind, so that next time, he’ll know where to scratch to damage London <i>just so.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magnet and the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Bender: "Ahh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two!"  
> Fry: "It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two." – Futurama, “A Head in the Polls”
> 
> Click the hyperlinks!

 

Jim Moriarty is the man with the key and the man with the keyboard.

His keyboard is London, and when he sees it, all he wants to do is press Select All. Delete.

Most of the time, he’d rather look at his keyboard than his screen, anyway. His screen is made up of eight million pixels – they’re all so _dull_ , so low-resolution: they want to raise a family, go to a business meeting, get married – so ordinary. The pixels don’t do anything important until he lets them – until he commands it, as he programs them with Java (and drinks it, too.) Until then, their existences are just background light to him, flickering soporifically in his dark insomniatic eyes.

London is lightless, but certainly not lifeless. Its inner mechanisms spark his mind into consciousness as he zips along the grooves of the city from King’s Cross to Vauxhall.

And, just as he does with London, he only presses all the keys on his keyboard when he is bored, or when he’s insane.

He’s usually both.

Night after night, he becomes sleepless. So he plays games. Sometimes, he plays Minesweeper – if he clicks on the wrong tile, everything explodes. If he clicks on the right tile, everything explodes. Sometimes, he plays Solitaire, because he is the only one of his kind. Sometimes, he plays FreeCell, because those prisoners ought to have a bit of fun, too. He usually plays Hearts, though, because he loves turning them over, watching them bleed.

But sometimes he does more than that, just because he is so _bored_.

He knows you need a keyboard to operate a computer. But his keyboard is gritty, dusty, grimy, caked and decayed with years of smog and soot and urban warfare and heat. He doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t like getting his hands dirty.

Instead, he rips apart the keys, one by one, with semtex and dynamite and acid and gas.

Sooner or later, that presses them enough. The computer does what he wants.

The pixels flutter.

But he hasn’t done enough, hasn’t understood enough. He cracks the computer open by force, and he studies the underbelly of the city, the schematics, the hardware, in all its urban glory, bleak gray slabs with sprinkled patches of green. He pushes away a loose wire here and there, the Bakerloo or Piccadilly or Victoria line, just to make it easier to see. He stares at a map and etches the circuitry of the city into his mind, so that next time, he’ll know where to scratch to damage London just so.

London is a vast circuit board, and Jim is its programmer, slowly bringing it down to size.

But his computer doesn’t break, no matter how much he tosses it around. The government has successfully woven him a fabric of lies and mismanagement (and, of course, sentiment) into a soft and sturdy protective case, easily portable and a safe shield from any damage. He keeps it on his computer at all times. (He has no choice.)

Besides, he’s a specialist. He knows how to fix a broken computer. He knows how to make it work.

And the easiest way to make your computer work without any keys is to use [a mouse](http://www.mollyhooper.co.uk/blog/28january).

 

* * *

 

 Jim knows how to do this very well. A mouse is made to click. [But you have to click with it first.](http://www.mollyhooper.co.uk/blog/30march)

Jim is always high-tech, and the mouse he chose is advanced: optical. [It sees better than others.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYOUejajr_Q)

A mouse will do what you want [if you put your hand on it](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m80603ZG2F1qadm9oo1_500.png). Sometimes you have to press harder, but if you do that, it’ll squeak.

But you can’t press too hard, or it’ll _squeal_.

That’s the thing about mice: they’re accessories. And an accessory can be used by any machine. It doesn’t owe its loyalties to just one owner.

Jim’s mouse certainly doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

Jim spins a web throughout the world, stringing a fine thread of his artificial intelligence from here to there until he’s nearly sewn the globe into a Westwood suit.

He is a [spider](http://www.techterms.com/definition/spider). He collects information. He trawls through his web, searching for fears and ambitions and mistakes and opportunities. He learns everything about the 8 million people in London; he learns that 8 is the atomic number of oxygen, the number that keeps him breathing; he learns that there are 8 electrons in a valence shell, the last possibility of stability before everything short-circuits. There are 8 bits in a byte and his bite can kill.

He traps his connections in his web, wraps them up, and paralyzes them.

When Sherlock calls him a spider, not a man, it is no mistake. Sherlock can understand Jim because Sherlock is also a machine.

 

* * *

 

But Sherlock is a magnet just as much.

One day, the magnet gets too close.

Everyone knows what happens when you put a magnet near a computer: the computer can’t function. The screen flares into bursts of color; the individual pixels blur into a saturated spectrum.

And Jim Moriarty loves it.

His vision is in Technicolor now, and the pixels light up in ways he had never imagined before. He sees the city in kingly crimson robes and red blood; garish pink suits; orange pips; yellow spray paint. He can see humans better now for what they are: putrefied green flesh, choked blue veins, torn purple muscles, and violet bruises that don’t heal.

London’s graphics get better, because London gets more graphic. The screen is now high-resolution but the violence has no resolution. Jim Moriarty finds a new purpose in his existence.

Sherlock is a magnet, and he warps Jim Moriarty’s hard drive forever.

 

* * *

 

To heal himself, Jim acquires a doctor. To restore everything to normal.

To remind himself that, for a computer, caring is really not an advantage.

 

* * *

 

That’s why he loves programming.

Just because someone does something doesn’t mean they want to, and whether they want to or not doesn’t matter to him.

Jim can program anyone into doing anything – [into saying things they don’t want to.](http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m147ujheYF1qiv5yk.jpg)

Into jumping.

Jim is destroyed and he is destructive.

Jim is programmable.

Jim is the programmer.

And Jim Moriarty is a hacker.

He can take a byte out of an Apple and a bite out of an apple, and in each, he can carve IOU.

But he’s a computer, and 2 is impossible.

So the error must be fixed. 2 must become 1. 1 must become 0.

And only then will the programming work smoothly again, and all of London will once more light up.


End file.
